Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/66

 The General PRiNcirLEs of Form. 51 fragment,' which he recognized both from its yellow colour, the fine polish it still retained, and its characteristic perfume when it is burnt. Now, from one end of southern Iran to the other, no cedars are encountered'; if travellers have noticed cedars in Elburz,^ their number will ir) no way challenge comparison with the fine speciinens that still fringe the slopes of Lebanon and Taurus. From one or other of these mountain chains, through the passes of Amanus, the Syrian waste, and the plains of Meso- potamia, up the giddy ramps, now called kotals, that serve to scale the Iran plateau, were brought the cedars out of which the main timber-pieces of the carpentry at Persepolis were made. Thousands of beasts of burthen, whole troops of njen, had to be told off for these transports; but distances and human lives counted but little when a desire of the King of kings had to be satisfied. The General Principles of Form. No ancient building of Persia has preserved its crowning member; to restore it, therefore, and succeed in setting up a unit of which the lower and middle sections alooe remain, it is most important carefully to note, mark, and digest such details as appear in the preserved parts, together with the nature of (he materials employed. But still more reliable information is offered to oiir curiosity in the representations left of their own edifices by the people whose architecture we are now about to study^ Among the Assyrians, for example, similar s^ulptumd transcriptions, exhibited in many war and hunting scenes, are more or less primitive in style,^ whereas the rock-cut frontispieces oi Lycia aod Persia were copied from built houses. The I^ycian tomb reproduces with scrupulous fidelity the aspect of the timber edifice, with the peculiar modes of its fabrication and joining of its pieces.* In the same way, the lower part of the tombs of the Persian sovereigns at the Takht-i-Jamshid and Naksh-i-Rustem is no more than an imita- tion of die palace fa^de (Fig. 9 and Plate I.). This iafade, no t. ii. p. 279^ A footnote teUs the reader the works from which he derived his information. ' Hitt of Arty torn. ii. pp. 379, 380, 395, 409, 475. Digitized by Google
 * DiBULAPOY, £Ari tmtigue^ iii. 5.
 * IVith regard to this subject consult G. Rawlinson, Tlu Five Great Monarchies^
 * i3»V/., torn. V. bk. i. di. U. s. i.